Inmate accused in two cold cases

Two murders from the 1980s may be solved with indictments today against a convicted rapist who has been in prison since 1985.

The Roanoke Times reports that Roanoke Commonwealth’s Attorney Donald Caldwell is seeking indictments from today’s grand jury in two previously unsolved killings and a rape from the mid-1980s that have been linked to the same suspect by DNA evidence.

William Ray Hagy Jr. is already serving a 50-year prison sentence for the rape of a 14-year-old girl in 1984. Roanoke authorities are aiming to prove that that crime was just one of a series committed by Hagy over a seven-month period.